WHITE PEAK by Ronan Frost; on sale May 21, 2019
Link to buy-this-book page:https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250130082
About The Author:
Ronan Frost worked for the British Ministry of Defence where he was a liaison with intelligence
operatives working behind the Iron Curtain during the last year of the Cold War. During the first
Gulf War, he worked with the Royal Navy. And then, he developed a plan with economic
experts for the rationalization and centralization of the British Royal Navy which was presented
to the House of Commons. Now retired from that life, he lives in Europe with his wife and
dog. White Peak is Ronan Frost's first novel.
A mind-bending thriller in the tradition of Matthew Reilly and James Rollins, Ronan Frost's WHITE PEAK (St. Martin’s
Press; on-sale May 21, 2019) is a fast-paced read full of death-defying adventure.
After experiencing first-hand the tragically familiar scene of an active shooter at a mall, Ryerson McKenna is torn apart
by a tragic loss that he couldn’t prevent. But when offered the chance at revenge against one of the men responsible, Rye
cannot refuse, even if it puts him in debt to a mysterious benefactor, Greg Rask.
A dying tech billionaire, Rask has invested millions chasing miracle cures. None of them are worth a damn, but he
refuses to give up. Now, he’s gathering a team, including Rye, willing to go to the ends of the earth chasing life.
Each of Rask's crew has beaten incredible odds to rise from the ashes of their old lives to where they are now. Together,
their next task is to retrieve a painting that is believed to hide a map which, if genuine, marks it as a treasure of the
Ahnenerbe, the occult wing of the SS, who had devoted dozens of expeditions in search of the three cintamani stones for
their combined properties, and the lost city where they were rumored to lay hidden: Shambhala. But a mystical
brotherhood sworn to protect the secrets of the ancients—the same secrets that allow its
members to defy death—will stop at nothing to ensure that Rask’s crew fail.
In an adrenalin-pumping quest through some of the most savage terrains known to man, the
crew will be pushed to the limits of endurance and beyond.
White Peak
Published by St. Martin’s Press
On Sale May 21, 2019
Hardcover | $27.99
ISBN: 9781250130082| Ebook ISBN: 9781250130099
White Peak Excerpt
Chapter 1
Ryerson McKenna listened to his wife’s death on the telephone.
He fed another quarter into the slot. The radio was playing
his favorite song. No one in the roadside diner said a word.
They all stared at him.
He pressed the phone against his ear.
“Rye? Rye? Can you hear me?”
“I’m still here,” he said, then cupped his hand over the
mouth- piece to yell at the waitress behind the counter, “I
need coins. Quickly. Please.”
On the screen above her head the words active shooter
scrolled across the aerial shot of the black smoke and
Sheridan Meadows shopping mall where less than five
minutes ago the shooter had rammed a truck through the
plate glass windows of the anchor store and kept on driving
right into the heart of the perfume de- partment. The smoke
was more than just the settling of debris; the truck, with a beer
company logo on the side, had been carrying a crude
fertilizer bomb that had detonated less than sixty seconds
after the engine died, barely giving the driver time to get free
of the vehicle and start shooting his way clear.
Ryerson was down to three bucks in change, enough to
keep the line alive for less than two minutes at the rate the
pay phone was eating through the coins.
He pushed it all into the slot.
He couldn’t afford to let the connection die. The cell phone
networks were overloaded. No other calls were getting
through. If the line dropped, he lost contact with Hannah. It
was as simple as that.
Three gunshots in rapid succession punctuated his next
words. “I’m going to get you out of there, Hannah, I promise.”
It was a stupid thing to promise, but he needed her to believe
him. This was what he did for other people; he could do it for
her. “Just stay with me, okay?”
2
“Okay,” she said, unaware that the clock on their call was
running out fast.
The world narrowed to vivid snapshots, brittle too-bright
im- ages of a life that had, in a couple of seconds, become
incredibly fragile: the foam crescent of his lips slowly sliding
down the side of the glass as his coffee went cold in the
booth; the yolk of his sunny-side up eggs congealing on the
greasy plate; the short-order cook with grease on the front of
his apron and bacon sizzling on the hot plate; the candy-
stripe straws in the glass jar on the coun- tertop; the yellow
sunflowers on the tables, petals wilting in the too-warm
interior; the trucker leaning against the bar with a piece of
green from his burger stuck between his teeth as he hit on
the waitress; the coffeepot burning dry with nothing but dregs
in the bottom.
The trucker emptied out his pockets, pushing another
three bucks in quarters toward Rye, who fumbled them up
and fed them into the phone, buying another two minutes on
the open line.
The cash drawer chimed as the waitress opened it,
scooping out another handful of silver. It still wasn’t
enough. No one paid by cash anymore. Not even tips. She
pushed the tip jar across the counter. There was maybe
another seven or eight minutes in there at best.
“More. I need more,” he said, his gaze sweeping across the
din- ers. Not including the two waitstaff, there were seven
people in there with him, and two of those were kids. One of
the diners, an art student type with plastic fl wers in her
hair, pushed back her chair and went around the table with
her hat, collecting every last quarter the diners had
between them, and brought it over to him.
He could only pray it was going to be enough to stay with Han-
nah until she was out of there.
The problem was he didn’t have a religious bone in his
body. He stared at the screen, trying to think.
He needed to do this like it was a complete stranger in there,
not the woman who was his world: keep her moving, keep her
away from the crowds, find a place to either hide out or get out.
“Han, I need you to look for the mirrors,” he said, thinking on
WHITE PEAK 3
his feet. “You should be able to see rows of them between the
storefronts?”
“I see some,” she said.
“Good. That’s great. Okay. You need to find the one that
opens into the service corridors. It’s probably in the middle.
Don’t panic if it doesn’t immediately open, some are false
fronts. You need to find the one that opens, and go through
it, before that main aisle becomes a shooting gallery.”
He regretted the choice of words as soon as they were out
of his mouth.
She breathed heavily in his ear. Running. It was hard to
hear anything over the screams and panic on the open line. It
was mid- afternoon. Not peak hours, but there must have
been a thousand- plus people in the mall. More, probably,
counting employees.
He was forty miles away, helpless, and his money was
running out. It was one of the modern pay phones, with a little
LCD dis- play counting down the cents.
He fed the coins from the tip jar into the phone. “I need more,”
he shouted at the girl with the hat. She nodded, but they both
knew she couldn’t just magic up money from nowhere.
Thinking on her feet, she ran outside to the parking lot.
“I can see them,” Hannah repeated, but this time she
wasn’t talking about the mirrored doors. Another burst of
gunfire under- lined exactly what she could see.
“Get out of there, Han. Don’t look at anyone. Just focus on the
mirrors. Get through the mirrors.”
“Oh god, oh god . . . oh god . . . Rye . . . Oh god . . . They
just . . . oh god.”
“Hannah, listen to me. Hannah, you can’t help anyone. I
need you to concentrate on my voice. You’re coming home
to me. Okay?” She didn’t answer him. “Go through the
mirrored doors. Hannah, can you hear me? You need to get
out of there.”
The girl with the hat came back into the diner and offered up
more coins. Her hands were shaking as she held out the hat.
There was a felt flower pinned to the front, and maybe six
bucks in coins and a pearl button inside it. It wasn’t going to
buy him enough time.
4 RONAN FROST
He needed more.
Rye grabbed a handful of silver and fumbled the coins into
the slot, each one adding precious seconds to the call.
The message on the television screen changed, the ticker
adding more detail to underscore the horror: explosion at
shopping mall. eyewitness reports of multiple shooters.
casualties.
Multiple shooters.
He’d been concentrating on getting her away from a
single point of danger, but before he could think about how
that changed things she was back with him. “I’m through. I’m
in some sort of passageway. It’s all concrete and pipes.” As
the mirrored doors closed behind her they muted the sounds
of dying. “I can see signs for Bay One and Bay Two.”
“Follow the one that’s heading away from the shooting,” he
said. “Every time you get a choice, head away from the
shooting. Eventually you’ll see signs for the fire exits.”
“I can see an arrow,” she said
breathlessly. “Follow it.”
He heard her hustling down the service corridor. The
count- down on the phone said he had less than ninety
seconds with her. She was on her way out now, away from the
worst of it. He looked up at the television screen, thinking: god
help those other people. . . . There was a distance to it now.
He’d made good on his promise.
She was on her way out.
“I can see light up ahead,” Hannah told him.
“Great,” he said, “head toward it. You’re coming home,
love. Just get out of there. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Just run
and keep on running until you’re behind the wheel.”
For the next dollar, the only sounds he heard were
Hannah’s heavy breathing and the slap of her footsteps
echoing in the in- dustrial passage.
And then they stopped.
Again, he cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. “I need
more money.” He saw the poker machine beside the door
and pointed. The waitress understood. She grabbed the key
for the coin box and
WHITE PEAK 5
emptied it out, spreading the coins out across the counter. She
sorted through them quickly.
He looked up at the television screen.
The message hadn’t changed.
“Rye,” Hannah said in his ear, only that, but it was the way
that she’d suddenly stopped, like there was nothing else to
say, the way that last footstep had dragged as she faltered,
the way her breathing had changed in that last second, that
told him she was in trouble.
Multiple shooters.
He’d led her away from one straight into the path of
another. There were no last I love yous.
With eleven seconds left on the display, the gunshots rang
out. Seven of them in less than a second. There was no more
brutal sound in the world. With nine seconds left on the
display he heard the phone fall from her hand. Eight,
silence. Seven, silence. Six and the only sound was the
slow measured approach of heavy booted feet. Five, and it
was the scratch of the cell phone’s case on the concrete floor
as the gunman picked it up. Three, a man’s voice told him,
“She can’t come to the phone right now.”
The one thing he didn’t hear in any one of those last
eleven seconds was Hannah breathing.
One final shot killed any remaining hope.
The waitress had more money for him.
He didn’t take it.
My thoughts
First off I want to thank St. Matin 's Press for inventing me to this blog tour and for send me a hard back copy of it so I could read it and review, and I have to say that I 100% loved it, from the very start to the very end and I hope this is a series because if it is its a great start and I want more of it, it reminds me of series that I'm reading, which are ; Jame Rollins ( SIGMA ) ,Andy McDermott series ( Nina Wilde & Eddie Chase), and the R.J. MacCready series by Bill Schutt & J.R.Finch , along with a touch of Michael Crichton's book Prey , its fast pace and it keeps you wanting to know more , and the characters , what can I say about them but I love them , if i have any favorites it would be Rye and the thief Carter Vickers , though out the book these two had me laughing with every comment made to each other . I also loved how he used history about the Nazis and how Hitler believed in the supernatural . With that said I want to thank St.Martin's Press as well as Netgalley for letting me read and review it , and I really hope the author writes more for this story .
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